Saturday marks the one-year anniversary of the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympic Games. There will be a celebration at 6:30 p.m. in the Rice-Eccles Stadium’s south-end zone, where the Olympic Caldron will be commemorated and lit before a fireworks procession.

The ceremony will take place every Feb. 8 to remember the month-long celebration in February 2002, when it was actually cool to be in Salt Lake City. The ceremony will remind us that for 24 days, our town was the happening place to be.

The U campus benefitted enormously from the international celebration. Aside from showcasing the campus to the world during the opening and closing ceremonies, the Olympics enabled the U and the city as a whole to make out like bandits.

The Olympics helped the U in several very concrete ways:

*New dorms–While it was fun to chase rats and extract foot disease in the old dorms’ community showers, Chapel Glen and the new residence halls have a lot more to offer. Officers’ Circle was also renovated as part of the Olympic Village. The circle now houses students from a variety of majors and groups around campus.

*Legacy Bridge–Now, students don’t have to play frogger to cross Wasatch Avenue–what a concept! It’s true that a Legacy Crosswalk probably would have done the trick just fine, but we’ll take an expensive and elaborate bridge visible from the downtown area just the same.

*TRAX–The trolley pipeline was built so people could get from downtown to Rice-Eccles for the opening and closing ceremonies. Students now benefit from it every day.

*Rice-Eccles Stadium expansion–With a big lift from the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, Rice-Eccles was transformed from an experience in architectural history to a state-of-the-art football stadium.

*Relaxed liquor laws–This is probably the most important attribute the Olympics brought to Utah. Waiters can now present restaurant patrons with a wine list instead of waiting for patrons to ask for one.

Further parking problems and construction may still be a pain, but when students look at what we’ve been given, it’s worth it.